The Last Killiney (29 page)

By the sound of their arguing, Ravenna figured Vancouver wouldn’t emerge until dusk, wouldn’t see her leave in her seductive shorts. Still, just in case his lieutenants did, she wore a skirt over her new cut-offs. She didn’t even tell Sarah what she’d done, not because she feared her disapproval, but because it didn’t really occur to her that what she wore was so horribly wrong. She planned to take the skirt off when she got to the beach, for swimming, she’d say. No big deal.

But it was a big deal.

After helping her climb out of the long boat, Paul held Ravenna’s hand as they waded through the surf. The day was overcast, sweltering. Paul wore no shirt, and his bare shoulders, long since darkened to a freckle-littered bronze, made his eyes seem all the more blue when they darted toward James and Sarah ahead of them, flitted back to Ravenna beside him.
What is he thinking?
she wondered.
Did Sarah say something to give my plot away?

Pushing his fingers through his hair unconsciously, Paul suddenly halted beside her on the beach. “You’re gonna swim, yeah?” His mouth twisted into an easy smile. “Course you are, you’re the scuba diver. Let me just get rid of this.” Unbuckling his sword, he called James back from the thatch-roofed huts. “Yo, Jem! Take this for me?”

He held out the weapon as James approached. Thinking to lose her heavy skirt, too, Ravenna stepped out of it, gathered it up. The open air felt nice on her freshly shaven legs, and she wondered, did Paul notice? Did she dare risk a look?

She never got the chance. Before she even knew what had happened, James yanked her forward; he’d pried the skirt away, and while he glanced around quickly to see who was watching, Ravenna caught the full force of his anger in his sudden grip, smarting and rough.

“What?” she asked, bewildered by his rage. “James, what’s wrong?”

“
Minx
,” he said under his breath, while behind her back, he worked furiously to untangle the garment, to wrap it around her as he continued swearing, “Mischief maker…trouble stoker.
Sarah!”

“But,” she stammered, “but Sarah didn’t even—”

“Is this your handiwork?” James glowered at the maid when she finally appeared. “
Is it?”

“James, this wasn’t—”

“Do you think she has the judgment to know what’s proper?” His dark face set in a disapproving scowl. “Do you think she knows how she looks to a sailor?”

“Oh, she knew what she was doin’.” Paul’s voice behind her, brimming with laughter. When Ravenna turned around, he gazed at her, eyes mirthful and smoldering as they wandered appreciatively down her figure.

In bafflement, James shook his head. “I don’t think you understand, my friend. This is immodest, shameful and—”

“I rather like it.” Paul’s eyes lingered on Ravenna’s, and she felt a warm glow pulsing all through her body.
He liked it
. She rejoiced in the thought, and it must have shown because Paul smiled a little, as if he knew everything, the fantasies she’d had, her questions for Sarah, the way she’d begged to learn the particulars of how to arouse him.

But while she considered his suggestive words, he turned toward James, handed him the sword. “Take this for me?” When James seemed confused, Paul nodded toward the water. “She wants t’go swimming, yeah? So I’ll take her swimming. That way no one’ll see her but me.”

Reluctantly, slowly, James let her go. He accepted the sword. When Ravenna walked away without taking the skirt, without covering her legs, he looked as if he’d die of embarrassment.

She wasn’t about to wear the skirt now. Yet as Paul began talking to her, she noticed the faces of the sailors they passed. It
was
as if she wore nothing. Those men without Tahitian women on their arms might have hurt themselves with craning their necks.

“You are a minx, aren’t you?” Paul chuckled to himself as they walked along. “What
were
you thinking, wearing a bathing costume t’go bathing?”

“I think James overreacted.”

“Well I don’t. I think he’s right.”

“What?” She threw him an incredulous glance. “You think I’m shameful for wearing shorts?”

Leaning into her as they strolled, Paul gathered her up under his arm and pulled her snugly against his side. “You’re gorgeous, really. Nice enough to eat.”

He held her that way until they’d reached the swimming place, a lagoon of sorts where they’d been told they’d find fish. There Paul sat down among the waves, and with the water lapping at his well-sculpted arms, there was no mistaking the passion that burned in his eyes when he beckoned her to sit by his side. “Come here,” he said softly. “I’ve something t’tell you.”

The very idea of it, that he might kiss her again, that his hands might find their way into her clothes, her shirt, within the fall of her cut-off trousers, it made a vicious trembling in the pit of her stomach. Did he know what he did to her? How helpless she was to that look in his eyes?

She went to him anyway, impelled by nine long months of craving. Sitting beside him amid the waves, she tried to still her jangling nerves.
He loves you
, she told herself.
You don’t have anything to be afraid of
.

Yet her heart fluttered wildly when his touch alighted at her shoulder, slid in a languorous caress all down her arm. Beneath the water, he edged his fingers into hers, gave them a squeeze, and suddenly she felt better. Hadn’t they held hands a thousand times? His eyes wandered appraisingly to her lips, to her throat and below, until lingering and flaming with a sudden desire, his attention halted at her chest.

She looked down, fearful to see what he stared at so.

Her shirt was completely transparent.

Of course, she should have thought of this in her plotting and scheming. Anyone else would have thought of it, and if she’d been any other woman, she might have seduced him then and there, reached for his rugged chin, unbuttoned her collar and led his mouth down to her waiting breasts, her fingers entwined in his tangled hair while he did the most indecent things.

But she didn’t. She was caught off guard by the boldness of his gaze. That he might actually make love to her there—no going back, this was real, not a fantasy—it was enough to make Ravenna hesitate.

There were little fish in the water at her feet, sergeant majors or something similar, and she found herself staring at them when Paul’s eyes tried to engage her own. She knew he was studying her, and yet how could she look at him? With that unbearable lust so obvious in his gaze, how did he have the patience to put up with her?

When finally he curled his arm around her waist, Ravenna was shivering. “Sarah’s comin’,” he said to her calmly. He tucked her closer, lifted his arm a little higher at her breasts, and Ravenna drew in a quick, sharp breath when he planted a kiss behind her ear. “Don’t let her scold you for not bein’ a lady. Tell her I’ll be the judge o’ that.”

When he withdrew himself and started to stand, she ached to pull him back. Before she could, he’d gotten to his feet. With a splash of salt water, he ambled toward the huts where James sat alone, and passing Sarah on the way, he was soon swallowed up by the darkness of shade.

* * *

Whether it was Sarah’s arrival that stifled his advances or her own stupid fears, Ravenna never learned. The rest of their stay passed without so much as a spark between them. Given that she’d panicked when it’d actually come down to the moment of truth, when he might have taken her in his burly arms, kissed her, plundered the length of her…given that she’d not had the vaguest notion of what to do with him once she’d aroused him, Ravenna decided to cool it for a while.

Vancouver soon gave her other things to worry about. In the weeks following their departure from Tahiti, it quickly became apparent that something was wrong with their moody commander. It wasn’t just the dizziness, or the way he was apt to yell at his officers.

Strange things went on inside his head.

In Hawaii, Vancouver thought the native chiefs were trying to kill him. He accused his own midshipmen of plotting against him. Even his lieutenants questioned Vancouver’s sanity when he forbade all midshipmen of both
Chatham
and
Discovery
to visit ship to ship, or to talk to one another unless duty required it.

All this, and he was undeniably ill; everyone could see that.

When the California coast finally came into sight, it was Ravenna’s turn to tread lightly around the captain. On April 26, he called her into the great cabin and put a tankard of port before her. “Elizabeth,” he said, and then more quietly corrected himself, “Ravenna, I’d delight in hearing what knowledge you possess regarding this shoreline we’ve been following. For nine days now we’ve sought secure harbor. Do you know this coast?”

“I’ve got an idea of where we are, yes.” She lifted the tankard of port. “We should be coming to a river soon, and after that there’ll be two large bays.”

Vancouver squinted his hooded eyes. “The bays,” he said, “you’ve seen them as described by the fur trader, Meares?”

She’d heard him talk about this fur trader. She’d seen the ship’s copy of the map Meares had made on his voyage to the coast in 1788. Surely there was no harm in elaborating on facts Vancouver already knew?

“They’ll be called Willapa Bay and Grays Harbor,” she told him. “You should be able to anchor in one of them, but I’d think the river would interest you more. It’s one of the biggest rivers west of the Mississippi.”

Vancouver scratched his chin thoughtfully. “When you say
big
…do you mean, my lady, it’s accessible for vessels of
Discovery’s
burthen?”

“It’s so large that container ships—gigantic ships, five, maybe six times the size of this one—use it all the time. I’ve seen them myself.”

“And this is a river?”

When she nodded, she saw anticipation flood the captain’s face. “An important river,” she told him solemnly.

“Possibly the passage to the east we’ve sought?”

“The Columbia goes inland quite a ways, all the way to the Rocky Mountains, I think. But it’s not the Northwest Passage, if that’s what you’re asking.”

The captain’s eyes darkened with disappointment. “Well, then,” he said, settling back in his chair. “If it’s only a river, this Columbia I’m afraid we have no use for.”

Watching his gaze lower to the table between them, she wondered,
Should I tell him about the Northwest Passage? Give him the clue he needs to find it?
But that would change everything, their course, his decisions…and yet he sat there, obviously disheartened. She wanted to give him something to think about. “What about the Strait of Juan de Fuca?” she asked. “Isn’t it one of your goals to find that?”

Vancouver lifted his gaze from the tabletop. “There is speculation this links the Pacific with Hudson’s Bay, but that’s providing this strait exists, which it doesn’t, I’ll wager.”

“Yes it does,” she said, and she couldn’t help smiling. “The entrance to the strait is farther up the coast, probably less than a hundred miles north of Grays Harbor.”

She’d expected him to be grateful, maybe even thrilled. Instead, Vancouver fixed her with a lecturing glare. “Captain Cook, God rest his soul, commanded our last mission to these shores and on that mission we discovered not one shred of evidence to argue the presence of this particular waterway. Cook supposed it a myth, inspired by the greed of traders such as Meares.”

“But it isn’t a myth,” she insisted. “You see, I lived there, my house was—”

“That’ll be all, my lady.”

Ravenna stared at him, alarmed that he’d cut her off. “I was
going
to say my house was on an island you discovered in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Now how do you explain that?”

“My lady, I’ve told you the opinion of the greatest navigator the world has ever known and you’ve summarily dismissed it. Now should you wish disagreement, find it elsewhere, but do not speak to me of Cook’s inadequacies, or I’ll—”

“I’m not saying he was stupid, I’m just telling you he missed the Strait of Juan de Fuca.”

“That will be all, my lady.”

“But,” and she stood up, not able to help herself, “but this is why you’ve brought me, isn’t it? And now you won’t listen?”

“My lady, if you think I’ll forsake Cook’s hard-won knowledge merely at the suggestion of your
supposed
future insight—”

“I’m not asking you to forsake Cook, I’m asking you to—”

“
That will be enough!
Do you think I’ve the hours to while away in chatter with women?”

His face had reddened to a furious plum. His lean frame tensed into a stance of obstinacy, and in view of his peculiar behavior in Hawaii, she suddenly saw the value in giving up. “OK,” she said quickly. “You’re right, there’s no strait.”

“I have no need of your tongue,” he shot back.

“I know, and I’m sorry.”

“You’re disrespectful, that’s what you are. Your every word is defiance, young lady, and I tell you, I’m under no contract with anyone whosoever to accommodate you. You’re sorely under qualified to even speak Cook’s name, let alone expound upon his discoveries. That you could believe for one instant yourself superior to his—are you listening to me?”

But she wasn’t. How could she talk to him? Did he expect her to stand there all day and be yelled at?

She knew she was letting her emotions control her, but suffering the brunt of Vancouver’s contempt, she saw only two options: Say something violent and truly unladylike to an historical legend, or turn away.

She chose the latter. She walked calmly to the cabin door and, hearing Vancouver’s voice rising behind her, stepped outside.

* * *

The following day, she made well and certain she stayed out of his way. She sat near the quarterdeck rail, diligently working on a sketch of the coastline, and when Vancouver came out on deck, Ravenna didn’t so much as look at him.

Soon they approached a point of land presumed to be Cape Disappointment. She watched furtively as the captain consulted with Mr. Puget. Gesturing toward the promontory and then alongside
Discovery
, they talked about the milky color of the water, as if a nearby river emptied into the sea. Ravenna recognized all of this as the opening of the Columbia River, although the breakers over the bar made it hard to tell.